I suppose there’s nothing unusual about a little kid waking up one morning to see a group of her parents’ friends socializing around the family piano. It’s just that when you’re young Loni Ackerman, those friends include Mayor John Lindsay, Ted Kennedy, Ralph Nader, several members of the Black Panthers and, playing the piano, football star Rosie Greer.

But hey, what would you expect from a kid who spends her 13th birthday party singing duets with Gwen Verdon, as directed by Bob Fosse.

Musical theatre fans know Ackerman as the girl with the big, belty voice who played the feisty maid in George M!, the Boston gold-digger in No, No, Nanette and the torchy Bronx teenager in So Long, 174th Street before graduating to replacement leading lady stints in Cats, Evita and Sunset Blvd.

But in her delightfully quirky cabaret evening now playing at the Metropolitan Room, Next To Ab-Normal, Ackerman explains how, as the daughter of two of New York’s most prominent philanthropists (Her mother, Cyma Rubin, produced No, No, Nanette and Doctor Jazz on Broadway.), casual dinners with family friends might include passing the salt to Dennis Hopper or Leopold Stokowski. (“I called him Skokie.")

Her funny anecdotes – like how Bobby Van inadvertently helped her lose her virginity – are accented with a collection of songs from her career and assorted American Songbook classics, charmingly sung with strong mellow vocals, accompanied by music director Paul Greenwood’s ensemble and directed by Barry Kleinbort.

“Crossword Puzzle,” which she introduced in David Shire and Richard Maltby, Jr.’s Starting Here, Starting Now, is given a stellar treatment as she recreates the breakdown of a neurotic New York woman who keeps intimidating her boyfriend with her advanced vocabulary. And when she brings back Stan Daniels’ “Men,” her big So Long, 174th Street number where a frustrated teen recalls the boys that did her wrong, she pops in some of those high shrieks of adolescent angst that made her original performance so memorable.

Hugh Martin’s “The First Girl In The Second Row,” which introduces stories about her dubious career as an aspiring ballet dancer, is followed by a gentler moment, a lovely rendition of Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields’ “Pink Taffeta Sample, Size 10,” a ballad cut from Sweet Charity, that Ackerman first heard when the lyricist sang it at her home before taking the show for pre-Broadway tryouts.

While spending time in Paris (a good excuse for David Yazbek’s “Here I Am”) Ackerman was asked to translate the original French lyric for a Joe Ricotta melody, resulting in the dramatic ballad, “Come Back, My Love.” She was told the song was being used for a film but she didn’t find out until later exactly what kind of film.

“My career with Andrew Lloyd Webber can be summed up in three hand gestures,” she quips, demonstrating the classic poses for Grizabella, Norma Desmond and Eva Peron before a dynamic medley of “Buenos Aires,” “New Ways To Dream” and “Memory.”

Married to sound designer Steve Canyon Kennedy, Ackerman says she’s happily settled into a more normal suburban life, but a visit to her abnormal past provides a perfectly charming evening.

When 18-year-old Josh pulls the string hanging from a box propped up on a shelf in his family’s living room, he gets showered with dozens of soft white feathers. The mile-wide smile and limitlessly joyful expression on his face, and the happy tingle you can imagine must be tickling his body all over, tells you that playing with this homemade toy is something he does frequently to bring him comfort and momentary, completely innocent happiness.

And when Josh nearly chokes the life out of his mother, easily lifting her from the ground in his powerful arms and effortlessly dragging her across the room, it’s also something he has done before, though not as frequently. The frightened expression on his face tells you he is defending himself against something he can’t comprehend, but as soon as he can be distracted with a puzzle or his beloved marbles, all fear is gone and his attention is focused on a new activity while his mother tries regaining her breath and puts her hands on the places where the new bruises will show up.

Josh is autistic and while his degree of autism may differ from that of others, playwright Deanna Jent has based her beautiful, heartbreaking, complex and desperately hopeful drama, Falling, on her experiences with her own autistic son.

Daniel Everidge, the actor who gives an outstanding performance as Josh, balancing the character’s pathos and unintentional menace, is an imposingly large and tall man who scoots about with a stiffened upper body and blurts out responses to questions in short sentences. He can seem like a gentle angel when relaxed on the sofa watching his Jungle Book DVD until he starts masturbating to it. Common noises like the blender running or a dog barking outside scare him into a panic and throughout the evening Everidge realistically keeps the audience braced for any unexpected reaction.

Jent says that Falling is about loving someone who is difficult to love. Bearing the brunt of that difficulty is Josh’s mother Tami, rivetingly played by Julia Murney with a desperately weary cheerfulness. Murney has made a career of giving excellent acting performances in musicals and while Falling doesn’t require her to sing, what makes her characterization so tragic is that Tami is continually required to give a performance for her son; making a happy game out of each everyday situation in order to keep Josh under control and quickly improvising to counter any resistance without scaring him into violent outbursts.

In many ways, Tami reacts like a victim of domestic abuse; turning to alcohol for quick comfort and being the first to defend her attacker when others fear for her safety. Her obligation to love and protect her son outweighs any concern for herself and she rejects any intimacy with her husband, Bill (Daniel Pearce), who has also learned the routines of entertaining Josh in order to get through the day. Their teenage daughter, Lisa (Jacey Powers), has given up trying to deal with her brother, afraid of his strength and resentful for being deprived of a normal childhood.

There’s no plot in Falling; just a finely detailed portrait of this family’s life played in ninety thoroughly intriguing, sometimes shocking, minutes. What stands out about director Lori Adams’ subtle production is how the family members see the intricate system of code words and distractions they’ve developed to help handle Josh as just a normal part of everyday living. They’ve been at this for so long that, instead of immediacy, we get the emotionless daily routine. This is especially apparent after Bill manages to pacify his son and diffuse an attack on Tami. It may seem like he doesn’t do enough to comfort her once the immediate threat is calmed, but most likely this has happened enough times that she has made it clear to him what she needs when this happens.

The play is set on a day when Bill’s mother, Grammy Sue (Celia Howard), comes for one of her infrequent visits. Never having seen the fully-grown Josh in action, the character becomes the audience’s eyes and ears, taking in the experience for the first time and becoming a sounding board for Tami, Bill and Lisa to talk about home life issues and express their feelings. Eventually, the playwright introduces a situation that allows them to think of how much happier they would be if Josh was no longer there; a thought that’s painful to consider, but understandable nevertheless.

Grammy Sue is established as someone who believes that prayer and the church can solve any problem, but Howard does a fine job in showing her gradual understanding of the situation’s complexities. Pearce's Bill is determined to be a good father and husband, despite the fact that he receives little joy from family life and although Lisa has detached herself from any relationship with her brother, Powers keeps the character sympathetic as she yearns for a reasonable amount of parental attention.

With two memorable central performances, a very strong supporting cast and a script that earns every tear it jerks from you, Falling is one of the finest theatrical productions currently offered in New York.

There’s no great mystery as to where the playwright is headed in Heresy, his latest Flea offering, as soon as it’s revealed that parents named Mary and Joseph are trying to find out why their son Chris was arrested by Homeland Security.

The patient carpenter (Steve Mellor) and his take-charge wife (Annette O’Toole) arrive in a comfortably dignified setting known as the Liberty Lounge to try and get some information from the local prefect, who is also an old buddy named… Well, let’s just say his nickname back in the day was Ponty (Reg E. Cathey). Also along is Ponty’s boozy socialite wife, Phyllis (Kathy Najimy), a character you might consider an illegal alien who has crossed the 14th Street border from one of Gurney’s uptown plays. (The very amusing Najimy has already left the play to take some television work, and has been replaced by Karen Ziemba.)

Taking notes of the meeting is a young, efficient orderly named Mark (Tommy Crawford), freely adapting what he sees and hears into his own story-telling style. Eventually we meet Pedro (Danny Rivera) and Lena (Ariel Woodiwiss), whose relationships with the never-seen Chris draw the expected parallels.

There are enough funny lines in the script and clever moments in director Jim Simpson’s production to carry us to the thinly sliced meat of the matter; that Chris was videoed preaching some radical notions and it went viral on the internet, prompting a need to hide him someplace, as they say, for his own safety.

Fortunately, Gurney doesn’t slam us too severely with his message and the 80-minute piece comes off like an extended post-Weekend Update SNL sketch. But the cast seems to be having a fun time with it and audiences who enjoy their mindless fun mixed with a bit of cautionary tale can do likewise.

I’ll spare you any idioms regarding the distance between apples and trees while examining the newest work of Daisy Foote, the playwright who carries on the lineage of one of America’s treasured dramatist, the late Horton Foote. But comparison is inevitable as the daughter’s most recent work has a similar voice to that of her father; just differently accented.

Daisy Foote’s Him may be set in rural New Hampshire, as opposed to Horton Foote’s preferred locale of East Texas, but there is still the same kind of comic/tragic family politics afoot. And the playwright’s sister, Hallie Foote, who made a career out of giving memorable performances in their father’s works, plays a juicy role very similar to the type she’s feasted on in the past.

This time Foote appears as Pauline, the eldest of three siblings living together in a home adjacent to the family’s financially failing grocery store. Never married and haunted by thoughts of her stillborn child from years ago, Pauline has filled in for her deceased mother in being the adult around her brothers. She does have her fun, girlish moments when going out with the youngest, Henry (Tim Hopper), a gay man with no romantic prospects in their small town and little motivation in life, but she’s all authority when trying to keep cheerful and carefree mentally challenged middle child Farley (Adam LeFevre) out of trouble. When she’s not looking, though, Farley impregnates his similarly challenged friend, Louise (Adina Verson).

The title character is their dying father who remains unseen in his room, having suffered a stroke, but each of his children has a moment reciting a passage from his journal, revealing family history and secrets to the audience.

The main friction arises because Pauline, the only one prepared to manage the family’s dwindling finances, wants to build on the land she and her brothers inherit once their father dies, but Henry can legally stand in the way, wishing to adhere to the man’s wish that the mountain land be kept in its natural splendor.

Director Evan Yionoulis’ sturdy production is well-played by a strong ensemble, but the play is too slow in introducing and developing its primary conflict and there is a noticeable lack of empathy for anyone in the quartet. There’s a bit of humor in the family portrait, but no warmth or dramatic crackle in a story that fails to match its interesting possibilities.

Twenty-five years after passing on, Michael Bennett still gets entrance applause in A Chorus Line.

It comes less than a minute after the lights go up on a stage full of dancers, auditioning for a director/choreographer who barks out instructions from upstage. But as the music swells to an electrifying Marvin Hamlisch fanfare, he moves his way downstage center, in full view of the audience, and sharply attacks the routine with the hopefuls behind him copying his moves with varying degrees of accuracy.

And with that image, the audience goes berserk; or at least they did on opening night of Paper Mill’s new production, where the guests included over 50 actors from the musical’s two Broadway companies, ready to perform an emotional encore of “One” as the evening’s grand finale.

There are other moments that draw enthused applause of recognition. Like when the company lines up with their black and white headshots in front of their faces. Or the first time they, in “those costumes,” strike “that pose.”

Certainly there are moments in the musicals first staged by Bob Fosse, Jerome Robbins, Gower Champion and other director/choreographers that have become fixtures of most remountings, but perhaps no other Broadway musical has had visuals so embedded into the material. A Chorus Line’s book (James Kirkwood and Nicholas Dante), music (Hamlisch) and lyrics (Edward Kleban) were all written to adhere to Bennett’s original concept and it remains the only instance where a director with no writing credit was named as a co-author when the show was awarded the 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

So although Bennett is no longer with us, several of the dancers who worked with him have made careers out of recreating his staging of the original Broadway production; save for some tweaks, presumably necessary to adapt to a particular theatre or cast member’s abilities. Mitzi Hamilton, whose story inspired the character of Val (“Dance: 10; Looks: 3”) and who has played the role on both the West End and Broadway, now adds Paper Mill to the over 35 times she’s mounted his moves.

And while some future genius may someday come up with a new way to present A Chorus Line, the show remains a museum piece in the best possible sense of the phrase; giving contemporary audiences a glimpse back at a time when – with a bare stage, mirrors and one costume change – intelligently written, musically exciting and passionately executed musical theatre surged with the magic that is the realistic capabilities of the human body.

Because of the choreographic demands of the show, first tier productions of A Chorus Line are generally cast with performers who may be known in the industry, but not to the general public. The company member generating the most interest this time around is Rachelle Rak; a standout performer in several Broadway choruses – occasionally nabbing featured moments – who rather publically was the second choice to play the tough-as-nails, wry-humored Sheila in the 2006 Broadway revival, though the documentary Every Little Step. Finally getting a crack at the role, roughly 45 minutes from Broadway, Rak fills it with the sardonic sexuality of a woman nursing her scars.

Playing director/choreographer Zack, Marvin Harvey sports a British accent; perhaps foreshadowing Broadway’s British invasion of conceptual musicals and pop-operas. While outwardly cold, he reveals some nice emotional cracks when dealing with Cassie, the dancer (and ex-lover) he turned into an emerging star by giving her featured spots, who comes to audition for his chorus after finding she lacks the acting skills needed to take her to the next level. Jessica Lee Goldyn’s Cassie maybe looks a little too young and sexy to pass for a woman who has gone through all the detailed bumps that have brought her back to a chorus audition, but she’s nevertheless an exciting performer in her solo, “The Music and The Mirror.”

(While the setting of A Chorus Line is usually described in programs as a Broadway audition, the Paper Mill program states the action takes place at the third and final callback, making seem unusual that it would take so long for the on-stage confrontation Zack and Cassie to occur.)

The book’s spoken highlight is a monologue by Paul, describing a time in his life where he performed in drag in a less-than-glamorous gay theatre. Generally played with shy sensitivity, J. Manuel Santos’ refreshing interpretation, while still emotionally vulnerable, has an unapologetic toughness to it. There is also fine work by Gabrielle Ruiz as a spunky Diana, who sings her memories of being embarrassed by an insensitive teacher in her first acting class, Kevin Curtis as the hyperactive Richie and Mark Myers as Mike, who delivers an athletically spirited and entertaining “I Can Do That.”

As Bristol Palin’s success on Dancing With The Stars has taught us, in a democracy the majority may rule, but the majority may also be made up of easily swayed, short-sighted idiots.

Henrik Ibsen, though no judge of dancing, was certainly thinking along the same lines with his 1882 political drama An Enemy of the People.

The story is set in a small coastal Norwegian town whose public baths, built though taxes and private funding, has considerably bolstered the local economy through employment and the tourists who come for the health benefits. However, the medical supervisor has discovered the waters to be contaminated by waste from a nearby factory. His solution to solve the problem would be costly and require the baths to be shut down for an extended period, so the mayor, who is also his brother, ignores his findings and when the doctor pushes for action, he finds himself vilified by the masses who would be expected to pay for it all with a tax increase.

In America, the play is most known from the textured morality arguments of Arthur Miller’s 1950 adaptation, but this new version by Rebecca Lenkiewicz has streamlined the story, modernized the language and peppered the script with a few sitcom zingers. It might have worked if the setting was shifted to contemporary times, but when framed by the period look of John Lee Beatty’s sets and Catherine Zuber’s costumes, the new text and director Doug Hughes’ fast and loud direction seem at war with the visuals.

Fortunately, Boyd Gaines carries the production on his versatile shoulders and makes it seem more of a worthwhile venture. From his initial entrance his Dr. Stockmann is far from selfless, naively enraptured in thoughts of being considered a local hero for his discovery of the problem and genius in finding a solution. But when the liberal newspaper editor won’t run the story and the printer won’t even make his pamphlets, he evolves into a determined and outspoken activist; one who eventually comes to denounce the public for the destructive power of the uninformed majority.

Unfortunately, none of the other characters are realized with such depth. Richard Thomas, as the mayor who suppresses the doctor’s findings and argues that nature will eventually settle things out, is a soft-spoken but one-dimensional villain; emphasized by his outfit of a dark cape, top hat and cane. All that’s missing is the moustache to twirl.

Though Hughes directs the company in broad strokes, he also gets interesting performances out of John Procaccino as the cautious newspaper editor, Michael Siberry as the factory owner who is also the doctor's father-in-law, and especially Kathleen McNenny, as the doctor’s loyal wife who realizes that angering her wealthy father can destroy her children’s financial future.

It was a very clever idea playwright Jeffrey Hatcher had, to write a Chekhovian style comedy about American theatre’s royal couple, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, set in their country home as they prepare to go into rehearsal for a production of The Seagull. And Ten Chimneys, named after the Wisconsin estate that provides the play’s setting, frequently lives up to that cleverness; though its wit could be somewhat sharper and its character study could go a bit deeper in order to match the potential of the idea.

The Lunts, as they were known, regularly turned down handsome sums of Hollywood money, preferring to trod the boards both on Broadway and on tours, so there is little remaining recorded evidence of their sporadic work in film, television and radio. Married in 1921, they happily spent their careers appearing together in plays that offered good roles for both of them.

Designer Harry Feiner fills the stage with a lovely cottage that would give most playgoers a severe case of real estate envy – exterior for Act I and interior for Act II – and the playwright populates it in Chekhovian fashion, with an assortment of characters spanning generations and social statuses.

Hatcher has the couple preparing for a tour of the classic, playing Arkadina and Trigorin, and wanting to do a bit of exploratory work before formal rehearsals begin. Byron Jennings, a familiar Broadway face who specializes in playing elegant period gentlemen, is a perfect choice to play Alfred Lunt; charmingly proper with hints of insecurity that bubble to the top on occasion, but confident and knowledgeable when working at his craft. As the British-born Fontanne, Jennings’ real-life wife, Carolyn McCormick, comes off a bit exaggerated in her cultured tones and mannerisms, but she handles the light comedy of her role very well.

Michael McCarty plays the portly Sydney Greenstreet (“You don’t look a day over 400 pounds.”), their friend and cast-mate whom they’ve invited to work with them and enjoy a stay. Greenstreet also takes the opportunity to visit his wife in a nearby sanatorium and has begun thinking he should give up the stage for a chance to make more money and have more time to be with her in Hollywood.

Arriving on the same train as Greenstreet, days earlier than expected, is the young, up-and-comer cast as Nina, Uta Hagen (Julie Bray makes the character both naive and ambitiously flirtatious), whose attractiveness and early success – and the fact that she was hand-picked for the role by Lunt – causes bottled up friction between the co-stars. This is in addition to the full-blown friction caused by Alfred’s mother’s (Lucy Martin) disapproval of his choice of a mate and the casual hints that Lynn is more concerned about a male friend of her husband.

Representing the working class, in a sense, is Lunt’s overworked half-sister (Charlotte Booker), who cares for their mother full time, and his pool shark half-brother (John Wernke), who is regarded somewhat as an errand boy.

Director Dan Wackerman’s genial production is lathered with sufficient froth and style, especially in the script’s best scenes where Lunt and Fontanne talk about their craft or are immersed in scene work, but Ten Chimneys tends to get a little tiresome when parallels to The Seagull don’t quite fly.

In musical theatre, it’s not enough to write a good song. You have to write the right song. Character, plot, placement and various intangibles all go into making music, lyrics and performance all effectively fit into a moment and contribute to the piece as a whole.

So, in the case of musical theatre dramatist Stephen Sondheim, the fun and frisky “Can That Boy Foxtrot!” gets replaced by the emotionally rich “I’m Still Here.” The acidic “Happily Ever After” gets rewritten into the hopeful “Being Alive.” And as for “There Won’t Be Trumpets”… Well, if the top-billed star is getting a better response for her delivery of the speech that introduces the song than for the song itself, the song gets axed and the speech stays.

By 1980, the Sondheim trunk was packed with quality material; not just unused songs penned for the then seven Broadway shows for which he wrote both music and lyrics, but also from unproduced works and lesser-known projects. It was the idea of Sweeney Todd chorus member Craig Lucas (Ten years before making his Broadway playwriting debut with Prelude To A Kiss) and director Norman Rene to shape a collection of them into a sorta-revue/sorta-book musical called Marry Me A Little; its title taken from a song of sorta-commitment that was cut from the original production of Company but has since become a permanent part of the score.

The two person musical, which originally starred Lucas and Suzanne Henry, is set simultaneously in two New York apartments (one just above the other), where, via nineteen songs and no dialogue, two young singles go about their business on a dateless Saturday night, wishing there was a special someone to share such evenings with. But instead of splitting the stage in two, the actors inhabit the same space, never acknowledging each other until moments where each of them imagines being with a fantasy lover.

Director Jonathan Silverstein‘s sweet and sexy production for the Keen Company tweaks the score just a bit, updates the action to the present and places the apartment building firmly into one of the trendier areas of Brooklyn. Jason Tam, dressed by costume designer Jennifer Paar in Williamsburg hipster garb, plays the male half of the company as a laid-back dude hiding a romantic heart. His counterpart, Lauren Molina, comes off as more of an outer-boroughs arty type. Both are engaging performers and it’s a special treat that their vocals are unamplified. Music director John Bell provides on-stage piano accompaniment, presumably from an adjoining flat.

Modern technology is highlighted in the staging. When the “Saturday Night” lyric mentions spending the evening at home with the Sunday Times, it sends Tam to his laptop for the web edition. Later, the staging of “Bring On The Girls” makes it clear that he’s logged on to a porn site. Likewise, as Molina sings of the boy who can foxtrot so well she’s giddily sexting the thickheaded lad. Fortunately, both of them are into vintage record players, as playing a vinyl disc is necessary for an intimate moment.

Since Sondheim is a dramatist who specifies music, vocabulary and rhyme schemes to the characters singing, a healthy suspension of disbelief is necessary to believe that Tam’s nervous, distracted juvenile dueting “Your Eyes Are Blue” with Molina is the same martini-tongued sophisticate singing “Ah, But Underneath” or the dejected cynic of “Happily Ever After.” (He makes a game effort with the middle selection but is far more effective in the other two, which are closer to the image he projects.)

Molina, whose cello playing skills are well incorporated into the scenario, benefits from having more material that genuinely contributes to shaping a believable character. She lights a fine, simmering flame beneath the quietly jazzy “The Girls of Summer” and belts out “There Won’t Be Trumpets” with a firm conviction that her ideal mate is out there somewhere.

Perhaps the only oddball inclusion to the score is “Bang!,” a number cut from A Little Night Music, where the original show’s dragoon uses the language of war to describe sexual conquest. The song’s formal language and graphically literal staging stands out as just too different from the way the characters are presented in the rest of the production.

Then again, it’s been over thirty years since 1980 and many of these once-obscure songs have become better known via recordings, cabarets, concerts and various Sondheim revues. Put a couple of theatre posters on the wall and Marry Me A Little would make perfect sense as two theatre geeks alone in their apartments acting out their favorite showtunes; the musical theatre equivalent of playing air guitar.

About Michael: After 20-odd years singing, dancing and acting in
dinner theatres, summer stocks and the ever-popular
audience participation murder mysteries (try
improvising with audiences after they?ve had two hours
of open bar), Michael Dale segued his theatrical
ambitions into playwriting. The buildings which once
housed the 5 Off-Off Broadway plays he penned have all
been destroyed or turned into a Starbucks, but his
name remains the answer to the trivia question, "Who
wrote the official play of Babe Ruth's 100th
Birthday?" He served as Artistic Director for The
Play's The Thing Theatre Company, helping to bring
free live theatre to underserved communities, and
dabbled a bit in stage managing and in directing
cabaret shows before answering the call (it was an
email, actually) to become BroadwayWorld.com's first
Chief Theatre Critic. While not attending shows
Michael can be seen at Shea Stadium pleading for the
Mets to stop imploding. Likes: Strong book musicals
and ambitious new works. Dislikes: Unprepared
celebrities making their stage acting debuts by
starring on Broadway and weak bullpens.